County still counting, some election margins slim but remain intact

The Kern County Elections division released an updated voter tally Monday for county-wide elections.The updated count has not changed the overall dynamic of those elected from Ridgecrest’s local candidates.When initial results posted at 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 7, mayor-elect Dan Clark had a nearly 500 vote over fellow...

Following Monday’s update, the overall difference between Clark and Taylor had not changed much. Clark by then had earned 4,189, or 46 percent of ballots cast to Taylor’s 3,679 ballots, or 40.4 percent cast. Jenkins had an additional 155 votes, totaling out at 1,191, or 13.08 percent.

This left the mayor results largely unchanged from Nov. 7.

Jim Sanders and Lori Acton still remained at the top of the list for city council results with Monday’s update. Sanders had 3,230 votes, or 20.62 percent of the votes cast and Acton had 2841 votes, or 18.14 percent.

Mayor Ron Carter, who was outed, remained a close third with 2,694 votes. Tom Wiknich had 2,571 votes and Scott Garver 2,107 votes. William Dale Howard and Henry Wilson were at the tail end with 1,138 votes and 1036 votes respectively.

A total of 9,059 people cast a ballot based on those who voted for mayor, or a 66.29 percent of the 13,664 registered voters within Ridgecrest, according to Kern County’s Election Division website, a slight improvement over the 61.59 percent during the Nov. 2008 elections.

According to Rhea, a number of challenged and damaged ballots still need to be counted as well.

“The damaged votes are being counted, they just need to be duplicated and run through the machine,” Rhea said over the phone Wednesday.

Challenged ballots are those election officials feel didn’t match the original signature of a voter. Rhea said that it went through a multi-tiered verification process, where two officials decided whether to count it or not. If officials disagreed, the final decision was rests with her.

A second update is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 19, before the Thanksgiving holiday. Rhea said that an official breakdown of how many voted in each area would not be known until the Elections Division releases an official notice.